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The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings date to 3500 BC. The Minoan civilization was remarkable for its great cities and palaces, its extended trade throughout the Levant and beyond, and its use of writing -
The Minoan eruption was a catastrophic volcanic eruption that devastated the Aegean island of Thera. It destroyed the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri, as well as communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and the coast of Crete with subsequent earthquakes and paleotsunamis.
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They were held at the Panhellenic religious sanctuary of Olympia, in honor of Zeus, and the Greeks gave them a mythological origin. The originating Olympic Games are traditionally dated to 776 BC. The games were held every four years, or Olympiad, which became a unit of time in historical chronologies. They continued to be celebrated when Greece came under Roman rule in the 2nd century BC.
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Homer's poem Odyssey, follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey lasted for ten additional years, during which time he encountered many perils and all of his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage. -
The poem is set towards the end of the Trojan War, a ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the siege's final weeks. In particular, it depicts a fierce quarrel between King Agamemnon and a celebrated warrior, Achilles.
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Cleisthenes proposed several democratic reforms which were implemented allowing all citizens of Athens (only Free Men were considered citizens) equal rights and established Ostracism as a punishment (temporary banishment from a city by popular vote).
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The Battle of Marathon was the first invasion of Greece by Persia in 490 BC. It was a fierce battle between the Armies of Athens and a Persian force. The battle was the first Persian attempt to capture Greece under King Darius's rule. -
The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between the Achaemenid Persian Empire and an alliance of Greek City States under Leonidas I in 480 BC over 3 days. -
The Peloponnesian wars were started in 431 BC when the two most powerful city states at the time, Athens and Sparta fought for control of Greece. -
The Parthenon was built in thanksgiving for the Hellenic victory over Persian Empire invaders during the Greco-Persian Wars. Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon also served as the city treasury. -
The Peloponnesian wars between Athens and Sparta ends when Persia intervenes and helps the Spartans. -
By 146 BC the Romans had captured every city state in Greece therefore conquering Greece. The Romans subsequently applied taxes to the Greeks.